Thankfulness

You gave me gifts, God-enchanter.
I give you thanks for good and ill.
Eternal light in everything on earth.
As now, so on the day after my death.
-C. Milosz

The renowned Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz (pronounced, Chez-law Mil-osh) died last Saturday in Krakow at the age of 93. I have a fondness for Eastern European poets and writers, and Milosz is a particular Polish favorite, along with Gombrowicz, Borowski, Mrozek, Herbert, and Bruno Schulz.

Milosz knew both Europe and America, was marked (as a poet, writer, essayist) by the major political upheavals of his time-notably WWII and Communism. He lived in exile in France and America for more than thirty years, taught at Berkeley for twenty years, and retired to Poland in l989. In l980 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Aside from his many books of poetry, he wrote a brilliant book on the intellectual’s survival under totalitarianism called THE CAPTIVE MIND (l951), which he explained in his preface:

“Its subject is the vulnerability of the twentieth-century mind to seduction by socio-political doctrines and its readiness to accept totalitarian terror for the sake of a hypothetical future, As such, the book transcends limitations of place and moment as it explores the deeper cause of today’s longing for any, even the most illusory, certainty.” A book which still speaks to us today.

Eastern European literature has a darkness to it that often shines, sometimes shimmers into surrealism. (The poet, Charles Simic, for example). Milosz’s poetry is both laced with classical asides, historical perspective and philosophy, but can also be incredibly conversational, lyrical, mater-of-factly ‘modern American’ as he visits the traditional subjects of man, woman, place, nature, love, art and death. One suspects that his years in this country (California) had an immense effect on both style and content. There is also a sensual sadness to the Eastern Europeans when it comes to affairs of the heart,

WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?

Where does it come from? These lips, twenty years old, lightly touched by carmine red, the chestnut hair in spray-too loose to say locks-these beautiful eyes in a frame of lashes and brows, proclaiming what? She was born in a time when I was teaching Dostoevsky and trying to cope with the realization that I was old.

There is no end to being born, and I, if allowed to continue to live, would sink again and again, dazzled by wonder and desire.

from ROAD-SIDE DOG (l998)

Time and again Millosz returns to the theme of literature and desire in his poems:

A CONFESSION

My Lord, I loved strawberry jam
And the dark sweetness of a woman’s body.
Also well-chilled vodka, herring in olive oil,
Scents of cinnamon, of cloves.
So what kind of prophet am I? Why should the spirit
Have visited such a man? Many others
Were justly called, and trustworthy.
Who would have trusted me? For they saw
How I empty glasses, throw myself on food,
And glance greedily at the waitresses’ neck.
Flawed and aware of it. Desiring greatness,
Able to recognize greatness wherever it is,
And yet not quite, only in part, clairvoyant,
I knew what was left for smaller men like me:
A feast of brief hopes, a rally of the proud,
A tournament of hunchbacks, literature.
from THE COLLECTED POEMS , l931-l987 (1988)

He is both awed by the role of the poet in life, yet clearly uncertain and accepting of his calling:

SECRETARIES

I am no more than a secretary of the invisible thing
That is dictated to me and a few others.
Secretaries, mutually unknown, we walk the earth
Without much comprehension. Beginning a phrase in the middle
Or ending it with a comma. And how it all looks when completed
Is not up to us to inquire, we won’t read it anyway.

But the true heart of Milosz’s poetry rests in that cauldron of Eastern European history, where he was witness to the sufferings and dreams of men, and where
an era shaped his conscience and forged his poetry:
DEDICATION
You whom I could not save
Listen to me.
Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.
I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.
What strengthened me, for you was lethal.
You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one,
Inspiration of hatred with lyrical beauty,
Blind force with accomplished shape.
Here is the valley of shallow Polish rivers. And an immense bridge
Going into white fog. Here is a broken city,
And the wind throws the screams of gulls on your grave
When I am talking with you.
What is poetry which does not save
Nations or people?
A connivance with official lies,
A song of drunkards whose throats will be cut in a moment,
Readings for sophomore girls.
That I wanted good poetry without knowing it,
That I discovered, late, its salutary aim,
In this and only this I find salvation.
They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds
To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds.
I put this book here for you, who once lived
So that you should visit us no more.
Czeslaw Milosz, Warsaw, 1945.